Nintendo recalls DS adapters, exchanges Wii straps

 

Gallery

By Reuters

Posted on 15 Dec 2006 at 15:51

Following reports of broken controller straps, Nintendo has said it will voluntarily exchange, globally, some 3.2 million straps for its Wii game console with stronger versions.

Nintendo also said it would recall about 200,000 AC adapters for its hot-selling DS and DS Lite handheld game machines in Japan, because they may overheat and cause burns on rare occasions.

No injury has been reported so far, concerning the adapter, the Kyoto-based game maker said on Friday. It is a different story for the controller straps, for which tales of damage and injury are growing (see www.WiiHaveAProblem.com).

The adapter recall is expected to cost between 100 million yen and 200 million yen ($848,600 - $1.7 million), and it is yet to be decided how the cost will be divided between Nintendo and the supplier of the AC adapter, Nagano Japan Radio.

The Wii, which competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360, features a motion-sensitive controller that allows players to control the game by swinging the device like a tennis racket or wielding it like a sword.

The exchange is expected to cost Nintendo several hundred million yen, the company said. Both the AC adapter recall and the strap exchange will probably have little effect on its earnings, the company added.

For the year to March 2007, Nintendo forecast an operating profit of 145 billion yen on sales of 740 billion yen. Prior to the announcement, shares in Nintendo closed up 3.6 percent in Japan at 29,420 yen, outperforming the Nikkei average, which gained 0.51 percent.